


Torch

by wendywanderlust



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Don't Like Don't Read, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Season 2, Trauma, canon compliant thus far, mentions of past rape (the mind flayer), the mind flayer - Freeform, underage smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 16:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19380136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendywanderlust/pseuds/wendywanderlust
Summary: The Shadow left its mark. No question about that. It got him. It took him. And something inside Will broke, that day. Will still trembles in terror at the flashbacks... but sometimes, something gets all twisted in his head. Sometimes, so late at night that no one else in the world could possibly be awake, Will thinks about Mike.He knows it’s wrong. But then again, what about him isn’t broken?+--+--+Or: the Mind Flayer really messed Will up. The trauma gets all mixed up with his kinks, and, well, maybe Mike can help him work through some stuff.





	1. Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> Not trying to sexualize minors at all - this is more of a character study and an examination of Will's trauma and one way that might affect him than anything else.

The Shadow left its mark. No question about that.

It got him. It _took_ him. And something inside Will broke, that day.

Will still trembles in terror at the flashbacks... but sometimes, something gets all twisted in his head, and he finds himself slowly, shamefully reaching under the blankets as the memories drive through his skull. The burning-cold, blasting force of the smoke-tendrils, pushing not only down his throat and into his eyes and nose and ears, but _everywhere._ Every orifice. The cold numbing him down to the bone, wrapping around him like a vice, stinging his skin, surrounding him, _filling_ him. He was choking. He remembers that. Choking, and trying to scream, but he was breathing so fast, lungs jackhammering in his chest, that he could only manage rapid, sporadic little shrieks. His eyes were wide open - wide, _wide_ open, almost comically wide - but all he could see was the shifting, writhing, driving _black_ as it bore into his eye sockets, burned up his nose and into his sinuses, shoved down his throat and pushed up _into him._ And it’s not _that_ that he thinks about as he touches himself, of _course_ not - but. But sometimes, so late at night that no one else in the world could possibly be awake, Will thinks about Mike.

Mike was there. He was there when Will surfaced with a gasp. He was standing there that whole time - and he was there while everything else happened, too. From the field where they burned the tunnels to the hospital to the shed - Mike was there. Kind, enthusiastic, earnest, _gorgeous_ Mike, with his fluffy-dark hair and his eyes as deep and dark as the night sky and his artfully curved cheekbones.

Will knows he shouldn’t. He knows it’s wrong and weird and probably just one more item on the laundry list of ways that he’s irreparably broken. But sometimes, all those images get tangled up in his brain. _That day,_ and Mike, and cold and heat and cords tied around his wrists and _rage_ and _\- let me go! Let me go! Let me go, let me go, let me go let me go let me go -_

The first time it happens it’s because he’s desperate for sleep. The past few weeks have been bad, and it’s supposed to be the best time of the year but he can’t seem to shake the shadow that seems to cling to him with sharp, intangible claws, and Mike kissed El at the Snow Ball and Will hates it, he hates _everything_ right now, and he just wants - he just needs - he just wants to sleep. That’s all. He hasn’t slept in what feels like weeks. So he resorts to this. To pulling one arm under the blankets, untying the front of his pajama pants, wriggling his fingers under the waistband. And he honestly didn’t mean to, but - well, like he said, it’s been a bad few weeks. Those images, those memories are all stewing in his head, putting so much pressure on the inside of his skull that he’s afraid it’ll split and burst like a chestnut in the fire. And somehow, _somehow,_ in his sleep-deprived, bleary, tangled-up state, everything gets all mixed up and backwards and spliced together, and all at once his brain is carrying him along through a fantasy that he never consciously planned. 

He imagines that he’s in the shed again. Tied to the chair again. And Mike is there - but only Mike. No one else. And this time Mike puts his hands on Will’s face, his cheeks, and says, _You’re freezing... We need to get you warmed up._ And Will knows this is just a fantasy, because if it was real, the Shadow would have snarled, _No._ But instead, in his imagination, Will nods fervently, unable to speak, unable to break through that crushing control enough to stir his vocal cords to action. And Mike yanks down the zipper on the front of his navy blue hoodie, peeling it from his arms, draping it haphazardly over Will’s shoulders. Baring his own arms, which pebble with gooseflesh. Looking down at Will with those soft, dark eyes, all sincerity as he says, _There. Is that better?_ And Will nods again, in his fantasy and in real life, unsure where his brain is taking him in this narrative but unable to resist the pull as imaginary-Mike inches closer, braces his arms around Will’s neck, climbs rather ungracefully into his lap. Straddling him. Caging him in with his gangly, _warm_ limbs. He whispers against Will’s hair. _Better?_

It’s the warmth that does it. Will’s mind has merely to _suggest_ that Mike would be warm - warm, in the midst of all that mind-numbing, crushing, burning _cold_ \- and all at once Mike is a torch. A bonfire. A being of pure flame, melting Will’s very essence with the heat radiating from him, scorching him with every touch. And Will _pushes_ up into it, into the burning touch, his real body arching against nothing but blankets as, in his mind, he bows up against the body of his best friend. The Shadow in him shrieking, recoiling from the heat, and Will chasing his destruction with fervor. The details blur and mesh, logic abandoned in favor of speed, and all at once the hospital gown has vanished and - and Mike’s clothes, too, he decides with a nervous lick of his lips. Mike would be - he would be pale, under his clothes. Will knows that. He’s seen that - at least, the top half. They’ve seen each other shirtless before a few times. Will knows that Mike’s skin is pale, with a sprinkling of freckles in the summer. He imagines - he cringes in shame for a moment, turning his face into the pillow, but only for a moment - he imagines that Mike would be hard. Under the blankets, Will’s fist flicks steadily over his own straining flesh. Impatient, he lifts his hips and shoves the pajama pants down his thighs, summoning up as much spit as he can to slather his palm with before continuing.

Mike would be naked, and hard as Will, and his skin would be fire. He’d smooth scalding palms up Will’s chest and down the backs of his shoulders. He’d press his white-hot torso to Will’s, searing away the numbing cold-burn of the Shadow. His tongue would be an ember, his mouth molten lava. A phoenix, perched in Will’s lap, his lips hot and wet where they’d bury themselves against Will’s. He’d rock - _oh -_ he’d rock against Will, grinding their bare flesh together rhythmically, and Will’s hand slows to emulate it.

It’s all downhill from there. Everything runs together like a watercolor in the rain, and Will is awash in the phantom feelings and images of _hands tied_ and _fire_ and _Mike_ and _control_ -

And it’s not enough. When the Shadow took him it was everywhere - _everywhere,_ not just on his skin but _inside_ too. 

Fueled by the half-drunken state of sleeplessness and lust, Will does something he’s never done before. He rolls onto his side. Sticks a forefinger in his mouth and coats it in saliva, sucking until it’s slick-dripping with the stuff. Reaches down. Hesitates. And then his brain hits him with another rush of supercharged blood as the memories get all knotted together with the fantasy - _fire, Mike, choking, pushing, tongues, skin, dark eyes, spreading, Shadow, pulsing, burning,_ burning _-_

Will whimpers into his pillow as he first starts to rub, investigating this unbreached boundary. 

_Mike would do this,_ his brain suggests, unbidden, and Will shudders and grinds unconsciously down against the mattress. _Mike would untie you and help you up off that chair and hold you against a wall and -_

It hurt when the Mind Flayer took him. It hurt so much, and he couldn’t even scream properly - but Mike - Mike wouldn’t hurt him. Much. Just a little. Just enough to make it _good._ And Will eases one fingertip in, cautiously, gasping and jolting against the mattress, pushing a little farther. Mike would - oh, God - Mike would do this. He’d push one finger up inside Will, like _this_ \- o- _oh_ \- and slide it out and push again, oh _fuck_ -

Will’s heart bangs against his ribs, fluttering at a million miles an hour. He’s sweating under the mass of blankets, his neck damp with it, strands of hair sticking to the nape of his neck. Warm. Warm, like Mike would be, kissing  him and softly pumping one finger up into him, speeding - _hah_ \- speeding up a little and, and - and biting Will’s lower lip, hard enough that it hurts, hard enough that Will starts to whimper and then squirm at the delicious little jolt of pain. In real life, he’s biting his own lip, teeth clamped down on it until the sensitive flesh throbs with his heartbeat, hot blood pulsing under his incisors. If he bit just a little harder he’d draw blood. For a moment, he’s tempted.

Mike would nuzzle his face against Will’s hair as he touched him, whispering to him, encouraging him. Things he’d never, ever say in real life. _It’s okay. It’s okay. I like it, too. C’mon, Will. C’mon, I can tell you like it._

He doesn’t mean to, but he releases a weak little moan into the pillow, mindlessly humping the bed and imagining that it’s Mike, stroking one finger into himself and _wishing_ it was Mike, wishing that he wasn’t really just alone in this bed, wishing that -

_Crazy together, right?_

Mike would -

Except he wouldn’t. 

Coming down from his release, still twitching every few seconds, Will curls onto his side and pants, trying to catch his breath. Mike wouldn’t. Ever. That kind of stuff... That’s what everyone says about Will, and people like him. And Mike isn’t like him. Mike is good. 

But that doesn’t stop Will’s brain for tormenting - treating? - him with images of Mike’s eyes, his face, his hands and hair and body, all mish-mashed up with restraints and hospital gowns and Shadows and fire. It happens far more frequently than he would ever admit - even to himself.

He knows it’s wrong. But then again, what about him _isn’t_ broken?


	2. Taste

It’s a bad one.

It started out as a run-of-the-mill nightmare, but when Will wakes, he’s launched straight into an episode.

Which is to be expected, really. He could feel one building for days, now, swelling and prickling at the base of his skull, lying in wait. Now, all it takes to tip him into a full panic attack is the full-dark of the Wheeler’s basement when he comes to. He claws his way free of sleep, his shrieks thin and breathy and pathetic, and he has barely one full breath before the bottom of his stomach drops out and his lungs go haywire.

He’s stuck between slides again. Shuddering back and forth between two realities, slamming so violently between the Wheeler’s basement and the nightmare projection of the Upside Down that he’s out of breath, gasping, shaking so hard it’s more like a constant full-body twitch, a convulsion. He can feel Mike shaking him, hear him calling his name, but he’s trapped in the memory, unable to respond.

It’s the field. Of course it’s the field - it’s always the field. The field, and the Shadow, and  _ go away, go away, go away! _ Burning, prickling cold shoving into him, body and soul, piercing the soft tissues of his throat, nostrils, ears, eyes,  _ everything. _ Everywhere. He tries to scream, and it gets tangled up in his throat.

In some distant corner of his mind, he’s aware - in a detached, impersonal way - that he’s lost track of what’s real and what’s not. Details shift and blur, phasing in and out of existence, warping around him. He’s on the field, standing upright and locked in place, and then with a heavy swoop of vertigo he’s lying on his back in the Wheeler’s basement, and then a whip-snap  _ slam _ of cold and he’s sitting in a chair in the shed, lashed to it so tight his circulation is cut off, and then a nauseating tumble through spacetime throws him back into the field, but he keeps falling, spinning, spinningspinningspinningbasementchairfieldbasement, and oh God make it stop, please make it stop, make it stop makeitstopmakeitstop _ makeitstop - _

Like a miracle, a godsend,  _ deus ex machina, _ an anchor appears. Hands. Mike’s hands on Will’s face. Something solid and  _ real, _ flesh and blood.

“Will,” Mike is saying. His voice is thick and clogged with tears. “Will, please, look at me, I’m here. Will  _ please _ look at me, I’m right here, you’re here, you’re okay, please -”

That touch - an electric shock of clammy warmth on either side of Will’s face - sticky, almost, and smelling of sweat and rumpled sleep and  _ Mike _ . Will snaps into a state of relative steadiness. The world still drifts and splits around him - carpet growing and dampening into grass, sky darkening and closing in until it’s a ceiling, the air freshening and then growing stale again, the temperature swinging wildly between extremes - but Will himself isn’t falling anymore. He latches onto Mike’s wrists with a gulping gasp, eyes so wide they ache, his grip crushing down until the skin of Mike’s wrists starts to turn white around Will’s fingers. He laser-focuses on Mike’s deep-dark eyes, faint galaxy of freckles over his nose and across his cheeks. The light in the basement is dim - or are they in the field? - but this close, Will can just barely make them out. 

The world begins to settle around them, but Will’s heart rate doesn’t. The images are still strobing through his mind, one after the other,  _ shadow fire Mike burning he’s lying let me go ropes tunnels hands Mike - _ and his brain reels, flooded with a muddled confusion of chemicals. Neurons firing at random, lashing out and grasping at the same time, lost and terrified and desperate.

The room solidifies, finally coming to rest at the right angles, corners settling into place with an almost audible  _ thump, _ walls locking into place, the ceiling no longer spinning, furniture phasing into reality and remaining there. But it’s dark. Will didn’t ask for the nightlight to be turned on before they went to sleep, because he’s not weak, damn it, not  _ that _ weak at least. But now it’s dark, and the blue-gray quality of light is horrifically familiar, and Will’s body realizes before his mind does that he’s trapped. He gives an instinctual buck of panic before realizing what’s on top of him.

Mike is perched on Will’s torso, most of his weight settled on his hips, pinning him down. He must have been thrashing around, trying to escape the vines and the Shadow and the fire. Will’s grip goes lax. Mike’s hands are still cradling Will’s cheeks, his weight on Will’s hips, and all at once he’s thrown back in time several months, to a fantasy he’s revisited one times too many - the shed, and the chair, and Mike, and heat, and - 

Panic spikes unexpectedly. He can’t move,  _ he can’t move, _ and he begins to squirm again, breath speeding up. He loves and hates the way Mike’s fingers press just a degree harder into his skin. Mike is talking again, trying to calm him down, sliding one hand under Will’s head so his skull doesn’t bang into the floor in his struggle.

“Will - hey - Will, it’s me - I’m not gonna hurt you -”

And he sounds so sad, right in that moment - so hopeless and miserable and scared and plugged-up with tears and snot  _ - _ that it actually pierces through some of the fog, and Will’s mind shifts on a dime.

Will is still stranded between realities, confused and bleary and half-buried in memories, but he doesn’t want Mike to be sad. That thought comes through loud and clear. He doesn’t want Mike to be sad. So when Mike says, “Will, stop -  _ please  _ -” just like that, Will goes still. Limp and pliant under his best friend, gazing intently up at his face, his eyes. A hint of baby fat still hangs around his cheeks. His eyes are void-black in the darkness. Will’s lungs heave, but they’re slowing. He’s growing calmer. Because something is swimming to the surface of his mind - like a wobbling bubble, shining deep underwater, rising steadily until it breaks in a swell of ocean water. A thought, jumbled and half-formed, but there: Mike is warm. Straddling Will, moisture glittering at the lower lids of his eyes as he looks down at him, Mike is panting, and solid, and reassuringly heavy, and  _ warm.  _ Hot, almost, his hands burning Will’s skin. Even when they slide back, fingertips trailing over Will’s cheeks and jaw, they leave a glowing streak in their wake - or so it seems to Will in his delirious state.

Something is rippling in Will’s memory. Mike, and warmth, and Shadow. Hasn’t he been here before? He doesn’t quite remember. But something is dancing just at the edge of memory,  _ just  _ out of reach, something about... about... 

A globule of that moisture finally grows heavy and overflows from Mike’s right eye, streaking down the planes of his face, and Will lifts a heavy arm to brush it away with the backs of his fingers. Mike gives a half-sob and lifts a hand to catch Will’s - and then, almost as soon as their fingers brush, he drops it again, looking away like he’s embarrassed. 

“Shit,” Mike breathes, unsteadily. “Holy shit, Will. That - was that -?”

That manic energy is still coursing through Will’s veins, pulsing like an invisible neon glow through his blood,  _ thrumming _ with power, spiking into his brain and the hollows of his ankles and  the tendons of his wrists, making him antsy. He wants to move, he wants to  _ act,  _ he has to  _ do something, _ he has to - to - what? The basement shimmers and blurs around them, furniture looming huge and dark in the shadows like lurking monsters, familiar angles rippling and sliding. Will blinks hard, opens his eyes, and refocuses on Mike. 

Mike.

Mike is solid. Mike is steady. Mike is real.

And he’s warm.

And Will is  _ freezing. _

He doesn’t remember deciding to. He just knows that one moment he’s lying on his back under Mike, buzzing with an electric crawl of  _ need-to-move, need-to-act, need-need-need, _ and the next he’s shoved up on one elbow, the other hand pawing at Mike’s cheek and jaw as if to guide himself. Mike’s breath catches and he draws back slightly, confusion sparking in the dark depths of his expressive eyes - but Will tilts forward again, questioning, pleading, because they’ve done this before, haven’t they? He remembers. He remembers Mike’s mouth on his, his tongue hot as an ember, his lips trailing molten down Will’s throat. And maybe that was a one-time thing. Will understands. He does. Extenuating circumstance, and all that. He knows he’s pushing his boundaries, breaking rules by asking for this now. But he’s just so cold, and Mike is so tantalizingly, invitingly warm, all his reassuring weight pressing Will down against the carpet this way, and Will’s skin is numb and tingling and he needs this.

“Will?” Mike says, his voice cracking just slightly in the middle of the syllable, his eyes flickering over Will’s face in question. 

“Please,” Will whispers in answer. He doesn’t mean to, but more words fall out of his mouth, bypassing his brain entirely as they drop from his lips, mumbled and slurred - “‘M jus’ - ‘m just so  _ cold, _ Mikey.”

A litany of expressions flickers over Mike’s face. He settles on something halfway between wary and tender. “Cold?” he repeats, as if that was the only word in the sentence he absorbed.

“Just one more time, just - just one more. Please.”

Will eases up again, and this time, Mike doesn’t twitch back. 

Their mouths bump clumsily. Mike’s lips hold none of the raging, searing  _ fire _ that they did last time, but they’re fever-warm, and somehow that’s even better. Less like a nightmare, and more... human. He’s no phoenix, perched over Will, he’s just Mike - and that in itself is so fundamentally good, so calming and reassuring and grounding and  _ Mike, safe, warm, solid, here, Mike, _ that Will shivers and presses up closer, working unpracticed lips against his best friend’s. Mike struggles a bit to keep up, breathing out a sharp little puff of breath against Will’s cheek. Will forces himself to slow, letting Mike catch up, trembling slightly and basking in it. 

_ Yes, _ something in him sighs, burrowing in closer,  _ this.  _

When Will pulls away, softly, he licks his lips on instinct. Mike’s taste lingers there. Stale sleep-breath and an echo of toothpaste and - blood?

Will’s fingers fumble at Mike’s mouth, his brows sinking into a frown, and he says, “Blood.” 

“What?” Mike says after a moment, sounding thoroughly flabbergasted and a little bit vague, his voice soft and tinged sweet around the edges, like he’s floating in a daydream. The word is a warm, damp puff against Will’s fingertips. 

But Will’s voice hitches with mounting panic as he hooks a finger past Mike’s teeth and guides his jaw open. “You’re bleeding.” 

Mike gently removes his face from Will’s fumbling hands, reaching up for himself to probe the apparent wound. “Oh.” His tongue moves around inside his cheek, the bulge of it shifting visibly in the low light. “Bit my cheek earlier.” He shrugs, skinny shoulders rising and falling under the old, worn-thin Star Wars tee that he sleeps in.

Will swallows. It was the barest hint - not even a whisper of copper and tin and salt - but he tasted it. And something in him - some deep, shameful part of him that’s still part of the Hive, still swift and keen and bloodthirsty - lifts its head and sniffs. 

It’s going out of focus again. The world, everything. Right angles splintering into slow, dizzy spirals. It usually comes in waves like this. In and out and in again. And now - oh, god, when did he lunge forward again? He registers Mike’s sound of half-swallowed surprise several moments too late, the noise filtering through the fog in his mind full heartbeats after he’s already licking into Mike’s mouth - less kiss, more probing quest, lapping up the warm, organic-metallic tang, blood and spit slickening their lips until their mouths slide together with an unnatural frictionless glide. There’s a moment of frantic, breathless silence, and then Mike’s jaw relaxes, his body unwinding against Will’s like the tension is draining from him all at once. The soft-slick touch of a tongue against Will’s makes him shiver, and it has nothing to do with cold.

He realizes what he’s doing half a second later and jolts back, breathing, “God - sorry -”

He’s dizzy. Face in his hands. World looping drunkenly around him. A moment of relative clarity hits him and he curls in on himself with a groan - but since Mike is  _ still _ sitting on top of him, he only manages to bring his forehead down on Mike’s sternum. His mouth tastes like a handful of pocket change, now, and it turns his stomach. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, hiding his face against Mike’s shirt, “Shit, oh my God, I’m - I don’t - I wasn’t -” 

“Will,” Mike whispers dryly, and that’s it, that’s the instant that Will knows it’s all over, because  _ he just fucking kissed Mike, _ and not only that, he was - was - oh, God, that’s it. 

That’s it, it’s over. Mike is never gonna trust him again after this. He’s never gonna want to be Will’s friend. Not after  _ this. _ A painful, hiccuping sob heaves its way from tailbone to throat, and Will wants to sink into the floor and disappear for good. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so - I’m s-s-so  _ fucked _ up, Mike, I don’t -”

“Did it help?”

The words scrape through Mike’s throat, harsh and somehow soft at once, toneless, and Will draws back unsteadily to see his expression. Mike’s face is an open book at the best of times. Now there’s something frightened there - no, not frightened. Concerned. Concerned, but determined, and something else, too, something Will can’t put his finger on. A single curl of dark hair, unruly with bedhead, brushes the eyelashes of his right eye. 

“What?” Will remembers to say at last. 

“Did it help?” Mike repeats, his voice raw but certain this time. That unnamable glimmer in his eye has strengthened. 

Will sits, his whole body shaking so hard he can feel the tremor in his chest and the tender tissues of his throat, reverberating like an earthquake through his bones and tendons.  _ Did it help? _

He thinks of Mike’s mouth on his, Mike’s body heavy atop his own, Mike’s scent - sunlight and sleep and Dial bar soap, toothpaste and some vaguely pine-like deodorant and Karen Wheeler’s fresh-sweet fabric softener. Mike’s lips, gentle, so gentle against Will’s. The hot-slick cavern of his mouth. Teeth and saliva and torsos crushed together. The overwhelming relief of  _ knowing, _ deep in the core of himself, that Mike is  _ there, _ that Will isn’t alone, that they’re together, that it’s okay. Will’s breath judders in and out of his lungs in two uneven beats, and then his chin jerks in a nod. 

“Yes,” he whispers, and the whisper seems to shake too, trembling like an aspen leaf in the air between them. 

For several hard, pounding heartbeats, there’s near-silence. Creaks and groans; the sounds of the house settling, pipes breathing in the walls. 

Mike gives a nod, and then his face is very close to Will’s, and before Will quite knows it, Mike’s mouth is on his again. 


End file.
